


Always On His Side

by pylades



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:01:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pylades/pseuds/pylades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katherine's son isn't marching off to war. He's dropping from the sky. And Jack has no idea why she's okay with this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always On His Side

January 1942

 

She watched Jack over the edge of her book, observing the way he clenched the paper. If he wasn’t careful, she would never be able to read the letter when he was finished with it.  
  
Nevermind the fact that she had received her own letter. She read it, too, long before Jack came home. Though nature had favored him with his father’s warm eyes and his mother’s smile, his temperament was much closer to that of his namesake.  
  
Katherine had always believed this was a good thing.  
  
Now, at the ripe age of thirty-five, David was choosing to follow his father’s example. He was choosing the dangerous, uncertain path over security and comfort.  
  
“He’s a fool!” Jack finally said, pushing up from his chair to stalk to the window. Outside, the snow had begun to mix with an icy rain and the typically busy street grew deserted. The wise hurried home before the roads became dangerous.  
  
“Like his father before him,” Katherine remarked, setting her book aside. “Jack, surely **_you_** understand why he’s doing this.”  
  
“No, I get it,” One of the hands that she loved so (older now and not as strong as it once was) moved through his hair in a frustrated gesture so familiar to her. “He’s a doctor and they’re gonna need good doctors. But a paratrooper? Jumpin’ out of planes?”  
  
David, never her daring boy, wanted to jump out of a plane. Jump into occupied territory, medical supplies strapped to him. Without a weapon (surely doctors, with their Hippocratic oaths, went unarmed into battle) …

For a woman who loved words almost as much as she loved her boys, Katherine had none to describe how she felt. Unbelievable? No, it was not enough.  

**_Mama, I know that it sounds crazy. Maybe crazy isn’t even the word for it, but I want to do this. I want to go where I can be used to my fullest potential. I’m strong and I’m healthy. I can do this, Mama._ **

“He thinks he can be more useful on the front lines.” He had been offered a safe position, in a stateside hospital. Examining boys before they traveled overseas, a position where the most danger he might face was a paper cut.  A position offered by a political sycophant in New York who knew Katherine’s father long ago.

Jack looked away from the window, smiling wryly at her. “He wrote you first, didn’t he?”

**_I need your support. I know that Dad’s not going to like this. And Annie – well, she won’t stop crying. We got into a big disagreement the other night. She thinks I’m betraying her. You’ll be there for them, won’t you? Make them understand why I need to do this? Or, if you can’t make them understand, at least make them see that I love them. I’m not trying to hurt anyone. God, Mama, the last thing I want is to hurt anyone._ **

“He’s still my baby, Jack.” She rose from her chair and joined him at the window, arms twining around his middle, cheek resting against his back. “He knows I’ll always be on his side.”

“Mmm,” her husband agreed. “I don’t get it, though. How are you so okay with this, darlin’?”

Because he remembered how she’d reacted when he enlisted so long ago. Her tears, her anger, her fear. They’d argued like they’d never argued before.

And he remembered how she’d clung to him like a lost child when he’d returned from war, as if terrified to let go …

“I’m – _okay_ – with this because I must be. Because we have no choice, Jack. I wish that he would wait, but if he doesn’t join now, he’ll be too old in another year for the Airborne units.”

She does not want to watch her boy, her David, marching off to war.

She did not want to watch her husband do it in ’17 either.

She wants to do what David needs of her, she wants to be strong, but Katherine does not like this. This entire war is madness. They were promised that the Great War would be the end to all wars.

Yet here they stood, frozen with the knowledge that their son in his _need_ to preserve life would risk his own.

Jack shifted and turned, wrapping his arms around her.

“We’ll support him in whatever he chooses.” He lifted her chin with one finger, tilting Katherine’s face to his. “Anne can stay with us. We can write letters. Hell, you’ll probably bang down ole Roosevelt’s door and make him end this war before David gets on a boat.”

“We’ll do it together.”

“Always, Ace, always.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the absolutely horrible Elaine. Because she was all: "OH, LET'S BREAK PYLADES' HEART BY WRITING NEWSIES WW1 FIC." And I was all: "OH, WELL, IF YOU'RE GOING ALL GREAT WAR ON ME, I'M HITTING YOU WITH WW2. SO NYAH."
> 
> And also to Max, because we're all incredibly mean to her. <3


End file.
